Ordinary diners who take part in our annual survey each spring review restaurants and leave their feedback, but we also ask them to score restaurants from 1-5 on food, service and ambience. Harden’s then uses an average of these scores and measures them against other establishments in the same price bracket to arrive at the ratings published in the guide and online.

Snippets from some of your feedback may end up in the overall Harden’s review, noticeably they appear in “double quotation marks”. The rest of our pithy, bite-sized restaurant summaries are compiled by analysing the survey data and extracting recurring themes, looking at whether or not a venue was nominated in any of our categories – like ‘favourite’ or ‘most overpriced’ – and, of course, looking at the ratings for food, service and ambience.

The Harden’s ratings indicate that a restaurant is:

exceptional very good good average poor

All reviews are compiled from survey comments and ratings, without any regard for our own personal opinions, except in cases where restaurants are too new to have been included in the survey. If you want the editors’ view on new restaurants in London you can find them in our Editors’ Review section.

News

From the indomitable Jason Atherton stable comes a new wine shop offering counter and table service tapas, opening today (9 June). Probably this country’s most consistent celebrity chef – from Pollen Street Social to City Social – Atherton’s restaurants are always a safe bet for “flavour popping” cuisine and “incredibly attentive” service, as far as our 2015 survey reporters are […]

He’s probably this country’s most consistent celebrity chef. From Pollen Street Social to (most recently) City Social, Jason Atherton’s restaurants are always a safe bet for “flavour popping” cuisine and “incredibly attentive” service, as far as our 2015 survey reporters are concerned. And now we hear that the chef-turned-restaurateur is to open his first restaurant […]